UB lands two Goldwater Scholarship winners, one honorable mention

Of UB's four nominations for the Goldwater scholarship, two — Walker Gosrich (left) and Anne Fortman — received scholarships, while Andrew Stewart (right) received an honorable mention from the Goldwater selection committee. Photo: Douglas Levere

“Our four nominees had especially strong academic credentials and research experience. Having two winners and one student receive an honorable mention is a wonderful testament to these students’ hard work and dedication to research.”

Elizabeth Colucci, director, Office of Fellowships and Scholarships

University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A Lancaster native studying nature at the
smallest scales possible and a student hoping to use robotics to
create “revolutionary prosthetics” are the University
at Buffalo’s latest Barry Goldwater Scholarship winners,
recipients of the most prestigious and competitive research
scholarship offered for undergraduate STEM students.

Anne Fortman, a junior majoring in physics and a graduate of
Lancaster High School, was described by one of her nominating
professors as “easily the best student I have ever
encountered in my career, from any institution.”

“She isn’t an ‘A’ student. She is a
‘100’ student,” wrote Salvatore Rappoccio,
assistant professor of physics. “Many students miss questions
here and there, and still get an ‘A.’ Anne is not
really in that category. She has yet to receive a single point off
on any physics class she has ever taken after two years at UB. To
my knowledge, that has never happened before in the history of the
department.

“This should give you an idea of the sheer talent of this
bright young scientist. I have never seen her combination of skill
and determination in any other student I have ever
encountered.”

UB’s other 2017 Goldwater winner, Walker Gosrich, is a
junior majoring in mechanical engineering, who interned for 10
weeks last summer in the lab of Yigit Menguc, assistant professor
of robotics and mechanical engineering at Oregon State University.
Menguc says Gosrich showed he is “easily at the level of a
PhD student already.”

“Walker Gosrich is a fantastic nominee for the Goldwater
Scholarship,” Menguc wrote in his nomination of Gosrich.
“To prove my belief in Walker, when he completes his
undergraduate degree, I will be strongly recruiting him as a PhD
student to my lab.”

Andrew Stewart, a UB junior interested in discovering novel
psychotherapeutics to treat addiction, received an honorable
mention from the Goldwater selection committee. The son of Pam and
Dave Stewart of Niskayuna, and a graduate of Niskayuna High School,
he wrote in his application that he was motivated to deepen his
understanding of addiction rather than pursue a career in medicine
because of the “public health nightmare that is our
(nation’s) current addiction epidemic” and his
experiences as the brother of a heroin addict.

Fortman and Gosrich are among 240 students chosen nationwide
from among 1,286 students nominated for the Goldwater scholarship
from 470 institutions of higher education. Established by Congress
in 1986 to honor the work and memory of Sen. Barry Goldwater, these
awards go to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue
research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and
engineering.

Both Fortman and Gosrich will receive a $7,500 Goldwater
scholarship for tuition during their senior year at UB. But the
academic prestige, networking possibilities and entry into the
highest echelon of their respective research circles are more
valuable than the scholarship award itself, according to Elizabeth
Colucci, director of UB’s Office of Fellowships and
Scholarships.

This year UB had the strongest pool of candidates competing for
its four nomination spots for the Goldwater Scholarship, she
says.

“Our four nominees had especially strong academic
credentials and research experience. Having two winners and
one student receive an honorable mention is a wonderful testament
to these students’ hard work and dedication to
research,” Colucci says.

Fortman, the daughter of Carol and David Fortman of Lancaster,
says she first heard of the Goldwater Scholarship through
UB’s SPARK program, an overview of national scholarships and
fellowships offered by Colucci’s office.

“Since then, the Goldwater scholarship was in the back of
my mind when I sought out research opportunities,” she says.
“And my faculty mentor also encouraged me to
apply.”

Fortman’s research opportunities have taken her to the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. She will travel
to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near
Geneva, Switzerland, this summer.

In applying for the scholarship, Fortman talked about the
encouragement she received at UB after realizing she was one of the
very few females in her department.

“After changing my major to physics at the start of my
sophomore year, I found myself in a special relativity class
intended for physics majors,” she wrote. “There were
about 40 of us in the class, but only three female students. This
was intimidating, as I felt that my work would have to withstand a
higher level of scrutiny to earn my place within the major.

“Of the near-40 faculty members in the department, only
three are women. However, I am very lucky in that two of those
women are very involved in the Women in Science and Engineering
(WiSE) program.”

She says that winning the Goldwater Scholarship has been
“an opportunity to appreciate the support network that is
available to students here at UB.”

Gosrich, the son of Charlotte and Thomas Gosrich and a graduate
of Plattsburgh High School, says his academic work at UB has given
him the basic knowledge needed to “realize a product from
inception and design to materials and manufacture,” along
with a computer science background that “explored the other
side of machines and learn what makes them tick.”

“We live in the age of robotics,” Gosrich wrote in
his Goldwater application. “In my lifetime, I have seen
robots transform from a science fiction concept into one of the
most useful tools in industry, and I will see so much more: from
the integration of machines and the human body to the development
of a truly humanoid robot. This great leap in technology brings
countless unprecedented opportunities to improve the lives of
people around the world.

“My greatest aspiration is to seize one of these
opportunities and contribute to this coming golden age of
robotics,” he wrote. “I aim to use a combination of
rigid and soft robotics to create revolutionary
prosthetics.”